Carnival Corporation (NYSE:CCL) will post its fourth quarter earnings on Thursday, while Wall Street anticipates earnings per share of 11 cents on revenue of $3.54 billion. Investors are enthusiastically awaiting Carnival’s 2013 guidance, but Nomura thinks that it might turn out to be conservative. Analyst Harry C. Curtis warned that, “We caution investors not to expect too bullish a forecast from CCL for several reasons. CCL is historically conservative with its guidance. This year may warrant even more caution given two years of event-driven, lower than-guidance yield (Arab Spring and Concordia). No doubt, CCL’s management would like to return to exceeding expectations.”

In the wake of the latest mass shooting in the United States, some top retailers are making the gesture of pulling certain types of guns from their shelves and websites this week. Dick’s Sporting Goods (NYSE:DKS) and Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE:WMT) are two of the companies that are doing this; the former says that it has pulled all guns from its store nearest the shooting scene, and also “suspended the sale of modern sporting rifles in all of our stores chain-wide,” and according to reports from the media, the latter has also stopped selling the Bushmaster semi-automatic, which was the weapon used in Connecticut on Friday.

The world’s biggest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE:BUD) is feuding with tiny, state-owned Budejovicky Budvar of the Czech Republic over the rights for the internationally-known name, Budweiser, for their bottles. Resolution discussions between the mismatched parties have now broken down, says Budvar’s director general, Jiri Bocek. Just one of the firms has the right to use the name in a given country, and the bigger company, AB InBev wants to expand its exports and market its beers under the Budweiser brand, which could wipe out Budvar’s own brand from the markets.

Mahindra & Mahindra, which is the biggest utility vehicle maker in India, will acquire the 49 percent interest of its American joint venture partner Navistar Group’s (NYSE:NAV) stake in the group’s embattled commercial vehicle joint venture Mahindra Navistar Automotives, and Mahindra Navistar Engines, for $33 million. Upon completion of the transaction, both entities will become wholly owned subsidiaries of Mahindra.